Blog Posts: Latin America

Because better information about climate finance offers big benefits, Colombia worked with WRI and its partners on a new system to measure, report and verify how much funding goes toward climate change projects. Launched November 27, the system has registered $6 billion worth of climate change actions.

Despite difficult negotiations in Lima, discussions signaled the positive outlook among development banks for expanding climate finance in Latin America and the Caribbean.

With increasing low-carbon investments, pledges to the Green Climate Fund, and ambitious renewable energy and efficiency targets demonstrate robust political and financial commitments, building momentum for a strong global response to climate change.

Leaders at COP20 can explore a range of sources for financing low-carbon urban development including multilateral investment banks, private investors, and innovative initiatives like the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions or climate-themed bonds.

A new collaboration between WRI and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture lets users of Global Forest Watch visualize and analyze tree cover loss alerts for all of Latin America with a near-real time deforestation monitoring system called Terra-i.

Between 2001 and 2012, Latin America and the Caribbean lost 36 million hectares of forest and grassland to agricultural expansion, and nearly half of the region's greenhouse gas emissions are the result of land-use change, forestry, and agriculture. So there’s a clear solution to curbing climate change in the LAC region—restore life to its degraded landscapes.